HAVEN
By Mishka Lavigne | Translated by Neil Blackadder
Pan Canadian Remote Remote New Translation Workshop 2020
Supported by
HAVEN
By Mishka Lavigne
Translated by Neil Blackadder
Translated from Havre (Francophone Canada)
The workshop included Mishka Lavigne (Ottawa), Neil Blackadder (Chicago), Johanna Nutter (Montreal), Art Kitching & Jack Paterson (Vancouver)
Elsie has just lost her mother, and Matt, is searching for his past. They’re brought together by the hole that opened up in the asphalt and the contents of the car that fell to the bottom. Haven is a play about loss, about absence, about emptiness. But it’s also a play about overflow, about too many memories and too many regrets. Haven speaks of friendships of necessity. Of the people we meet when we need them the most; those we meet when everything around us crumbles. Haven in the storm.
Recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Drama French Language (2019).
Havre (2019) | Théâtre populaire Romand – Beau-Site à La Chaux-de-Fonds
Photo: Samuel Rubio
About the playwright
Mishka Lavigne
Mishka Lavigne (she, her, hers) is a playwright and theatre translator. Her play Cinéma, coproduced by Théâtre la Catapulte and Théâtre Belvédère in April 2015, is published by Éditions l’Interligne. During the 2015–16 season, thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, Mishka was the artist in residence at Théâtre la Catapulte, where she worked on her play Havre. Her first play in English, Albumen, was recently developed in the United States. Her monologue Vigile, written for Théâtre Rouge Écarlate and Théâtre du Trillium, was staged in March 2017. Writing projects include Copeaux, based on the work of visual artist Stefan Thompson, with director Éric Perron, and Shorelines, a play in English, with artist Emily Pearlman. Mishka is a member of the English-language playreading committee of the Maison Antoine-Vitez in Paris.
About the translator
Neil Blackadder
Neil Blackadder (he, him, his) recently retired as Professor of Theatre at Knox College, where he had taught since 1998. He began translating drama and short fiction in 2002. In 2004, he was certified as a German > English translator by the American Translators Association. Neil is also the author of Performing Opposition: Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience (Praeger, 2003).
Neil completed a BA in German and French at the University of London, Goldsmiths’ College – including full years spent in both Paris and Tübingen. In 1987 he came to the US to study Comparative Literature, first at UCLA (M.A.), then at Princeton (Ph.D.) From 1994-98, Neil taught in the Drama program at Duke University.
In 2011, Neil was awarded a fellowship from the Howard Foundation (Brown University) and a PEN Translation Fund Grant to translate plays by Lukas Bärfuss. Neil has twice held residencies at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and Writers Omi at Ledig House. His work has often been supported by the Goethe-Institut, as well as by the Consulate General of Switzerland and the Austrian Cultural Forum.
Active member of ALTA: the American Literary Translators Association. Founding member of TinT: the Theatre in Translation Network. Member of The Fence, and of the Third Coast Translators Collective. Recently took on the role of Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine.